Alpinist announces Film Festival Screenings in Bozeman, Boulder, and SLC

Jackson, Wyoming – August 7, 2008. The Alpinist Film Festival announced today that it will present three one-night screenings in Bozeman (September 18th, the Emerson Center), Boulder (October 8th, the Boulder Theater), and Salt Lake City (October 18th, the Murray Theater) this fall. As the first screenings of the 2008 in these tour cities, these unique events will retain the master festival’s signature elements, including a cocktail hour with New Belgium beer, a live DJ and a silent auction, complementing more than two hours of award-winning films.

Each winter in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, The Alpinist Film Festival celebrates the adventure lifestyle across disciplines and generations with three nights of skiing, surfing and climbing films. The Festival’s mission—to advance the art of cinematographic storytelling as it underscores the unity among the adventure lifestyle communities—is complemented by its philanthropic focus: a portion of every year's proceeds are donated to charities that help preserve places adventure athletes like to play. Because one of these places is the planet, the Festival is a carbon-neutral event, using carbon offsets to counteract its carbon footprint.

The fourth annual AFF, held January 17–20, 2008, featured for the first time a fourth evening: The People’s Choice Ceremonies. The lineup for the Tour events will showcase a number of the 2008 AFF People’s Choice award-winning films, many of which were US or world premieres. Snow Night’s Mountain Town: The Grasshopper, which highlights the charming and humble telemark skiing phenomenon Nick Devore, was one of the audience favorites from Snow Night. Stone Night’s The Great White Fright intrigued audiences with a curious ascent of Dover, England’s legendary chalk cliffs, made with an arsenal of weaponry normally reserved for ice climbing. Audiences also applauded The Beckoning Silence (the film adaptation of Joe Simpson's bestselling book), which follows Simpson to the North Face of the Eiger. And the surf film/social documentary Sliding Liberia, which follows a group of surfers who travel to Liberia in search of perfect waves, won both the People’s Choice Award for Surf Night and the Grand Prize Award for the entire 2008 AFF.

Retaining a key element of the master festival, the Bozeman, Boulder and Salt Lake events will kick off at 6 p.m. with a party. Food, wine and New Belgium beer will be available, and local DJs will spin tunes to get the crowd in the mood for the films that follow. Audience members will be able to bid on a wide selection of items during the silent auctions, proceeds from which will benefit SurfAid International, the 2008 AFF’s featured non-profit. Christian Beckwith, editor-in-chief of Alpinist Magazine and the director of the Film Festival will present films, which begin at 7 p.m.

“Bringing The Alpinist Film Festival on tour is a great opportunity for us to share our event with other outdoor communities,” said Beckwith. “Bozeman, Boulder and Salt Lake are communities with similarities to our own, and we know the audiences will really enjoy the events.”

Tickets and additional information for the Alpinist Film Festival Tour events can be found online at alpinist.com.

About Alpinist Magazine

Hailed by Italian climbing legend Reinhold Messner as "The best climbing magazine in the world today," Alpinist Magazine is an archival-quality, quarterly publication dedicated to world alpinism and adventure climbing. The pages of Alpinist capture the art of ascent in its most powerful manifestations, presenting an articulation of climbing and its lifestyle that matches the intensity of the pursuit itself. Alpinist has been awarded three Maggie Awards, for Best Quarterly/Consumer Division, Best Overall Design, and Best Electronic Newsletter, and was featured in a seven-page article in Outside Magazine ("The Purists") in March 2005. The magazine's editorial and publishing offices are based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and online at www.alpinist.com.